Court Vision: The latest around the league

• Royce Young has 10 takeaways from Kevin Durant’s exhibition game in Oklahoma City on Sunday. Things that disappeared, per Young: Michael Beasley, in the fourth quarter, and LeBron James from the locker room without talking to reporters. (That did not stop James from flooding everyone’s overnight Twitter feed by retweeting praise he received from fans.)

• Putting together a three-continent barnstorming tour for NBA stars is proving difficult.

• Kate Fagan of the Philadelphia Inquirer explains why the Sixers should not use the amnesty clause – provided such a clause makes it into the CBA — on Elton Brand.

• David Aldridge, writing at NBA.com, pulls no punches on the owners’ lockout agenda and the dangers of a prolonged labor dispute. He also works in a top-notch reference to The Simpsons and puts a little more meat on a potential trade restriction designed to reduce the number of predatory trades — something I examined last week:

There will be changes in the trade rules to keep the rich teams from trading — and trading for — expiring contracts.

Having this rule go both ways — touching inbound and outbound expiring deals — is interesting.

• At Sheridan Hoops, Mark Heisler still says we should see NBA basketball by Dec. 1 and mentions this tidbit about David Stern’s alleged machinations:

When Clippers owner Donald Sterling said at a league meeting that he’d fire Stern if it was up to him, it actually came at Stern’s prompting, noticing Donald was stewing, realizing an outburst would scare owners back to David, as opposed to lining up behind Donald.

• Also at Sheridan Hoops: A list of some of the nitty-gritty rules (some of which we mentioned here) the two sides have either agreed to or approached something resembling agreement. Some of this stuff — restricted free agency timetables, salary-matching rules for trades — might seem boring, but each issue is incredibly important in terms of the league’s day-to-day operations, and agreeing on things like this should work as a solid first step toward settling the thornier stuff.

• We’re at 400 lost jobs and counting in the NBA world, though it’s unclear how many of those might out-of-work folks might get their jobs back after the lockout ends.

• At ESPN.com, Kevin Arnovitz has a Q&A with Golden State’s Rick Welts, the first openly gay executive in league history, that is alternatively insightful, moving and hilarious. One excerpt has Welts, who left the Suns in September, discussing the reaction he has received since coming out publicly in May:

I was probably prepared for a mixed reaction to the story — maybe 90-10. But it was unconceivable to me that of the thousands of calls, emails, letters — people still write letters — every single one has been nothing but encouraging and positive which, for me, was a little overwhelming.

This is something Welts has repeated in other interviews — that he has not received a single negative comment, e-mail, phone call or letter since his announcement. That is remarkable.

• A former commissioner of Australia’s National Basketball League writes in The New York Times about Stern’s current predicament:

Only one team wins the championship (meaning 29 miss out), and most teams are operated to break even financially or lose manageable amounts (valuable at tax time) while chasing the league crown.

The reality of these foolish pursuits? In the last 25 years, only eight N.B.A. teams (26.6 percent) have won a title. Of the remaining teams, most have never contended for the title and most have lost money. That explains, in part, why an aggregate of N.B.A. teams reportedly lost $650 million in the past two years.

You have to use a really strict definition of “contend” to argue that “most” of the league’s non-champions over the last 25 years have not “contended” even once.  Off the top of my head, here are the teams that really, truly haven’t “contended” for a title over that stretch: Charlotte Bobcats (a baby, still); Charlotte/New Orleans Hornets (a handful of conference semifinals appearances, including a seven-game loss to San Antonio in 2007-08); Toronto Raptors; Vancouver/Memphis Grizzlies (a borderline candidate in my view, given that a brutally tough Grizz team was a win away last season from the conference finals); Los Angeles Clippers (check their record in the draft); Golden State Warriors (theirs, too); Milwaukee Bucks (perhaps a borderline choice, given conference finals appearances in 2000-01 and three times in the mid-1980s); Washington; and Atlanta (never beyond the second round).

That’s nine teams from markets large and small, and you have to address significant caveats with three or four of those before declaring them total non-contenders for the last quarter-century. (And a few of those nine teams have very bright futures.) The NBA, and basketball in general, has always seen less competitive balance than other professional sports. That may well be inherent to the structure of basketball. But let’s not exaggerate the degree to which this is a problem.

• Over the weekend, the Salt Lake Tribune published a series of stories on the business of the Jazz and the family of the late Larry H. Miller, the longtime owner of the team. Start here with this Mike Gorrell piece on the Miller family’s non-Jazz businesses, some of which surely get a boost from the family’s association with the team. Then continue onto this Brian T. Smith piece on Randy Rigby, the team’s longtime president, which addresses Rigby’s career and all the ways the Jazz have fortified ties with key sponsors. Some really interesting nuggets across these stories.

• Your daily update on how notable NBA names are doing in Europe. With a half-dozen or so high-level games in the books, some trends are starting to emerge. For instance: How about Kyle Singler?

• Deron Williams did not shy away from a hot-button political issue in Turkey.

• Roger Mason Jr. says Knicks owner James Dolan wants a deal soon and that coach Mike D’Antoni has expressed regret for benching the shooting guard during the latter stages of the NBA season. There’s no reason to doubt Mason on either count, especially since union officials publicly named Dolan among a group of alleged doves looking to compromise soon. But it’s worth noting that Mason, as a free agent and a union leader, has a stake in both of these claims being true — and publicized.

• Despite the doomsday rhetoric, most studies show that fans return to particular sports after a labor dispute. The league and owners take comfort from these studies.

• Some Spanish teams have interest in Serge Ibaka, a new Spanish citizen.

• How will Portland fans remember Brandon Roy 25 years from now?

• A really interesting look at how badly the Pacers fared offensively in the clutch last season, and how well new Pacer George Hill did in those same clutch situations.